Posted
by
timothy
on Friday March 26, 2010 @09:41PM
from the put-your-words-in-a-row dept.

martin-k writes "SoftMaker Office is a Microsoft-compatible office suite that competes with OpenOffice.org. Its creator, German software publisher SoftMaker, is nearing completion of the latest release, SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux. This new release offers document tabs, high-quality filters for the Microsoft Office 2007 file formats DOCX and XLSX, and presentation-quality charts in the spreadsheet. It also brings integration into KDE and Gnome, using the system's colors and fonts. A release candidate is available as a free download."

Holy cow, how did this not get binspammed off of the submissions? Someone actually managed to get an advertisement as a story into Slashdot. Actually, it's sort of an impressive accomplishment. Off to the submissions I go to try and make some money!

Holy cow, how did this not get binspammed off of the submissions? Someone actually managed to get an advertisement as a story into Slashdot. Actually, it's sort of an impressive accomplishment. Off to the submissions I go to try and make some money!

A: Because OpenOffice is an open-source, collaborative project that no-one has to pay for.

As an aside, this Softmaker product probably needs a serious amount of advertising to generate any kind of traction in the Linux market. Until today, I had never heard of it, and I've been using Linux for something like 15 years. I would suppose that it might appeal to new users of Linux who are accustomed to having to pay for any software they find useful, but I can't see it appealing to older hands.

Q: I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this?
A: Because OpenOffice is an open-source, collaborative project that no-one has to pay for.
As an aside, this Softmaker product probably needs a serious amount of advertising to generate any kind of traction in the Linux market. Until today, I had never heard of it, and I've been using Linux for something like 15 years. I would suppose that it might appeal to new users of Linux who are accustomed to having to pay for any software they find useful, but I can't see it appealing to older hands.

I agree with your sentiments./. is not the place I'd go to advertise a product given the general type of responses you'd get. Beside the complaining about price; they'll be a number of posts pointing out free alternatives and some informative ones discussing problems and performance issues. Anyone reading it is likely to come away with a mixed view of your software; and if it has a free equivalent the/. readers are likely already using it. Not exactly what I'd call a receptive audience that will gener

Q: I've heard OpenOffice discussed on Slashdot before, so why not this?
A: Because OpenOffice is an open-source, collaborative project that no-one has to pay for.

Sigh. I know this is Slashdot, but is it too much to ask that people read TFA? From the article: "You can download the release candidate (final beta) of SoftMaker Office 2010 for Linux free of charge here."

This was submitted by a SoftMaker employee, has only SoftMaker links, and only talks about the positives of SoftMaker. The submission fails to mention that it's closed source, GPL incompatible. How about a link to a critical review? A heads up comparison of SoftMaker, OpenOffice, and MS Office?

Maybe because it's an ad for a product that's actually useful to the point where it has no real competitors? It has noticeably better MSOffice compatibility than OO.org, and it's much more lightweight, as well. I suspect it would be something that quite a few Linux users could use - so long as they aren't morally opposed to shelling out $50 (or whatever it is these days) for software.

MacOS X has a larger marketshare than Linux. Furthermore, because OSX is Unix based, porting almost any application from Linux can be done in a few days (although the GUI might not have a native feel).

If you just want an office package for Linux, OO.org will probably suit you fine. The point of SMO is to 1) assuredly open/save MSOffice files (for which only Word/Excel/PowerPoint are really interesting), and 2) run with decent performance on slower PCs.

In many scenarios, it's useful to have the same application software on multiple platforms. Such as, oh I don't know, business and education?

Why would a business or educational institution want multiple desktop platforms? Especially OS X and Linux? I can picture OS X only, and I can picture a mix of Windows/Linux (say, mid-migration) - which is handled (SoftMaker has a Windows version), but aside from that...

Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.

Why would a business or educational institution want multiple desktop platforms?

Different users have different preferences, for one. There are also areas where different platforms have speciality applications that are unavailable on other platforms - such as video editing on Macs, or AutoCAD on Windows. Or perhaps a company wants to migrate to Linux, but make the transition gradually, with familiar tools.

Whatever their reasons, isn't really a concern of yours. I'm just saying it can be a valid consideration.

Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.

I haven't found this to be the case. For example, Adobe's Creative Suite is alm

Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.

I haven't found this to be the case. For example, Adobe's Creative Suite is almost identical on Mac or Windows, with minor differences that don't affect the core interface. MS Office is more divergent, but still works in basically the same way. Firefox is basically the same across platforms.

Open Office is a great example of this. Run it on Windows, Linux, OSX, etc; a user who is familiar with it on one platform should be perfectly at home on the others. For jobs that just use the OS to run software, it's not the OS that matters -- it's the application. That's one of the reasons Mac OS has survived; they always managed to attract developers who produced good quality software for the professional user in one field or another.

There are jobs where the OS does matter, such as using OSX's superior i

In many scenarios, it's useful to have the same application software on multiple platforms. Such as, oh I don't know, business and education?

Why would a business or educational institution want multiple desktop platforms? Especially OS X and Linux? I can picture OS X only, and I can picture a mix of Windows/Linux (say, mid-migration) - which is handled (SoftMaker has a Windows version), but aside from that...

Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.

As I understand it, a major issue for readers of Slashdot when it comes to using Linux on their machines is the ability to maintain compatibility with the documents they have to handle coming from coworkers, using the in-office set up. That is, someone wants to avoid buying Windows and Office, and run free, open source alternatives on their home desktop, but they have to still consider the work that trickles home from the office.

OSX isn't FOSS like that, but the same idea largely applies. Maybe someone has

The obvious comparison is to OpenOffice. One of the *major* advantages of OpenOffice is that it runs on all platforms of modern interest- Linux, MacOS, Solaris, and MS-Windows. You can select one application and know it will run on whatever machine you come across, use, or want to select later. It frees you from platform lock-in. It creates a bigger support community. As a school, you know everyone can run it at home. At work, you can kn

1) It lacks vector drawing (Draw)2) It lacks database (Base)3) It is closed source4) Although it supports Linux, it seems to not support MacOS5) It costs a lot more than OpenOffice

Sorry, it is hard to get all that excited.

It seems like they're suffering from being closed source. At least, I see no reason why they would brag on their feature list about having spelling dictionaries for 20 languages; isn't that something aspell or another open source equivalent would immediately improve? Are they writing their own to keep GPL'd code out completely?

It may have better MS Office compatibility, and if that's a major need for someone who doesn't want to mess about with MS Office and Wine, they should try it while it's free. Aside fr

All applications, free or not, ultimately compete in the "get the job done" market. For some, Google Docs does that. For others, OO.org does that. And others yet might not be content with OO.org, either for performance or compatibility reasons - in which case this thing may be the only one they can get for their platform for any price.

All applications, free or not, ultimately compete in the "get the job done" market. For some, Google Docs does that. For others, OO.org does that. And others yet might not be content with OO.org, either for performance or compatibility reasons - in which case this thing may be the only one they can get for their platform for any price.

And it's worth pointing out, that for some, a good rich text editor is all that's required. An office might use Word all the time, but that doesn't mean every job in that office needs to do word processing. On the development/engineering side of things, when asked to review a section of a document, if you don't need the document, just the text in some readable form.

That's like saying that Farmer Brown's peaches at $5/pound compete with the tomatoes in your garden. After all, ultimately they're both fruit.

Something that costs $100 does not "compete" with something that is free for use, at least for the vast majority of people. The demographics of those two markets are quite different. Similarly, many people simply won't put business documents online. For those people, Google Docs does not compete with either of those other software suites. I am not arg

Some people might not be content with OO.org, true. But I would bet that is a small minority. OO.org is compatible enough with MS products that you have to do some relatively arcane things before you will notice much difference in the end product.

I have to say you don't get out much. My GF does agricultural policy and regularly works on collaborative documents where she gets a Word document that OO doesn't import properly, or tries to send something back after she edits it, and some version of Office doesn't handle it well. By regularly I mean every week. The problem is further exacerbated by her list of regulars not all having the same version of Office.

Not one of them is competent to properly structure a complex document using any of these prog

This is true. However, I have a suspicion it might not do so for long. I am reminded of Applixware (I think it was called), a commercial office suite available for Linux back in the late '90s. Although at the time Linux was poorly supplied with useful office suites, Applixware got little traction, and was essentially wiped out when Sun started distributing StarOffice for free.

Until then, I had made do with legacy free releases of WordPerfect and with the var

But StarOffice is still based on OpenOffice (with additional proprietary features).

Actually, it's the other way around. OpenOffice is based on StarOffice, with the proprietary stuff stripped out. I'm guessing that releasing the code might have been a strategy for Sun to get development done without having to pay for it, but I think I read somewhere that Sun still contributes development resources to OOo.

Noticeable? Really? I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see.

and it's much more lightweight, as well.

Well that part does sound good.

I suspect it would be something that quite a few Linux users could use - so long as they aren't morally opposed to shelling out $50 (or whatever it is these days) for software.

I have no objection to shelling out money (it's actually closer to $100 US but no matter) for good software, however best I can tell you dont actually get any software for your money here, just a binary blob. I wont pay for that.

Noticeable? Really? I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see.

A quick Google search will tell you that you're the lucky one. I mean, did you never hear horror stories about people opening.doc/.docx files to find wrong fonts, messed up tables etc? Or saving as.doc/.docx in OO.org so as to give the file to someone else, and later find out that it got reformatted to the point of being unreadable to them in the process?

Then again, it largely depends on the amount of documents you're working with, and even more so on their complexity. There are many people for whom OO.o

>Or saving as.doc/.docx in OO.org so as to give the file to someone else, and later find out that it got reformatted to the point of being unreadable to them in the process?>Then again, it largely depends on the amount of documents you're working with, and even more so on their complexity

One of the major, MAJOR factors that causes "formatting issues" like you mention is when a document is poorly formatted. I can't tell you how many HORRIBLE MS-Word, OO, and WordPerfect documents I have seen over the

Noticeable? Really? I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see.

A quick Google search will tell you that you're the lucky one.

Maybe he meant noticing problems importing MS files that qualify as above and beyond the problems that Word itself has importing certain versions of it's own Word files. I mean, fonts can mess up even using the same version of Word on both ends, if the initial creator uses non-universal fonts and doesn't include them when sharing the document.

To sum it up: if you don't see any problems with OO.org, and are content with it as it is, then this thing is probably not for you (I find it hard to believe anyone could possibly justify a $100 price tag for, at best, a moderate speed improvement). If you have problems with OO, though, I don't even need to explain you what they are, and how this thing can help you there.

I agree with you here; if you don't see problems with OO.org, then you have nothing to try to fix (and certainly no reason to spend money). However, if you do have pro

Clearly you haven't tried to open a PPTX file in Impress; that import filter is barely alpha quality at best.

And if you want to see justification for this statement, I just put together a small page [wisc.edu] to annotate some screenshots I've been collecting over the last couple OpenOffice releases that compare what a couple slides should look like vs what they actually do look like in Impress.

>Until MS office gets perfect ODF export or OpenOffice perfect emulation of office 2007 graphics filters, I suppose your best bet is to create presentations in OpenOffice and save ppt versions for those students who don't have access to it.

Or for him to at least not use (as he puts it) "fancy new 3Dish effects introduced in PowerPoint 2007"! Comparing just two slides, created by one person, who even admits using "fancy new" effects is hardly a rational or reasonable comparison.

Until MS office gets perfect ODF export or OpenOffice perfect emulation of office 2007 graphics filters, I suppose your best bet is to create presentations in OpenOffice and save ppt versions for those students who don't have access to it.

Or for him to at least not use (as he puts it) "fancy new 3Dish effects introduced in PowerPoint 2007"! Comparing just two slides, created by one person, who even admits using "fancy new" effects is hardly a rational or reasonable comparison.

I agree that there are far more issues with OO opening PowerPoint files than with MS-Word or Excel files (I know because I use OO every single day), but declaring it to be "barely alpha quality" is way beyond inaccurate.

To take it even further, if we're talking about someone lecturing with slides that are provided to students after a lecture, it seems pretty silly to distribute it in a slideshow / presentation format at all. The slideshow is there for the lecture, so one can rely on revealing the next bullet point on cue, which will vary lecture to lecture. Students have no need whatsoever for that, they just need the information. The best solution would be to give the lecture using slides, then distribute something like a

To take it even further, if we're talking about someone lecturing with slides that are provided to students after a lecture, it seems pretty silly to distribute it in a slideshow / presentation format at all. The slideshow is there for the lecture, so one can rely on revealing the next bullet point on cue, which will vary lecture to lecture. Students have no need whatsoever for that, they just need the information.

This, I think, is a wholly incorrect statement. The information is inextricably bound up, to

Or for him to at least not use (as he puts it) "fancy new 3Dish effects introduced in PowerPoint 2007"! Comparing just two slides, created by one person, who even admits using "fancy new" effects is hardly a rational or reasonable comparison.

Yeah, I should just not use the features my software gives me. That'll teach them to not improve.

Less facetiously, take a look at the screen shots. It's not really doing anything that fancy, just an extra little edge for aesthetics. (And no matter how much a lot of peop

>Yeah, I should just not use the features my software gives me. That'll teach them to not improve.

No, you shouldn't generalize everything based on a few broken features. It is like meeting someone and asking them two questions and they get the answers wrong and concluding that he is stupid or that even all humans are stupid. Or giving a new medicine to two people, they don't get better, and forming a conclusion that the medicine (that millions of people use every day) doesn't work for anyone.

Through random misfortune, you might be doing something that tickles a few bugs. 1,000 other people could be asked to make two slides and compare and none of them hit both bugs, few hitting one, and their conclusions would be totally different. It is just basic statistics.

Okay, let me reiterate, and I've added more evidence, that Impress screws up dead simple presentations. See here [wisc.edu]. Again, I'm not doing anything weird modifying the slide templates or masters or anything, and these bugs show up across mulit

Well, no doubt, you have invested significant time on the issue(s)- so it really does seem well worth reporting. If there is anything about OO that drives me crazy is the very slow pace in which bugs are corrected. I am certainly not the only one to notice that, either. Sometimes I think it is the stronghold that Sun has on the project combined with limited resources (and this mess with Oracle has all of us nervous). Other times I believe it is just the nature of a project so huge that it dwarfs Linux,

Oh, I did try, and was (slightly) disappointed to see that. I thought that might be a big reason to do that.

However, Arker didn't make any statement regarding SoftMaker Office's compatibility with MS Office formats, just that "I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see." I was merely pointing out an area where there is tons of room for another piece of software to step up where OO.org fails.

I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see.

Formatting. When you're sending out resumes businesses expect it to be in Microsoft Office (I don't know, PDF seems better to me) and so if you've got poor formatting then it reflects poorly on you for your employer. If they're getting dozens if not hundreds of job applications, poor formatting is enough to get your resume dismissed straight out the door.

When you're sending out resumes businesses expect it to be in Microsoft Office

Is that really true? I've been in the same company for the last 8 years, so don't really know in great detail what the job market is like these days, but I do recall that back then, companies never specified the file format. I always used PDF and no-one ever said anything about it.

Also, these days I am occasionally called upon to sort through a pile of electronically submitted CVs before handing them on to someone else, to "weed out" those without the appropriate technical skills (something which HR would

>so if you've got poor formatting then it reflects poorly on you for your employer.

Bingo. And 95% of the time, the "poor formatting" is due to the person formatting the document and it has little nothing to do with file comparability. There are a zillion ways to poorly format any document in any program (and I recently listed a dozen examples I see all the time in another posting). And such poorly formatted documents will FALL APART when not viewed with identical software versions with identical fonts

I have yet to notice any problems importing MS files to OO so that's hard to see.

Formatting. When you're sending out resumes businesses expect it to be in Microsoft Office (I don't know, PDF seems better to me) and so if you've got poor formatting then it reflects poorly on you for your employer. If they're getting dozens if not hundreds of job applications, poor formatting is enough to get your resume dismissed straight out the door.

Companies are more interested in finding a fit for the job than if the header styles line up properly. If you are sending a basic, professional resume (and not using a template in your word processor), there won't be any issues anyway, as you don't need anything more than rich text formatting to do it. If you need something with more "pizazz" to impress (perhaps you're a graphic designer), then using a word processor at all seems limiting.

So essentially it's Open Office, except with only 3 programs (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) and they want 70 euros for it? I'm sorry, but I fail to see why anyone would pay 70 euros (10 I could possibly see) when you can get Open Office for free.

The cheapest version of Microsoft Office (Home & Student, contains Word, Excel and Powerpoint, supposedly non-commercial use only) costs ~£100, and many people don't seem to have a problem paying for that.

Considering the Chinese government pays hackers to steal foreign companies secrets and spread propaganda to their own people, who knows what they've paid the company to insert into their office software. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps something. Why take that risk?

Openoffice causes me trouble occasionally when I've got a document with a lot of figures in it. The worst is when I accidently try to edit a picture, and it crashes because it can't find a Java VM. In my experience... Openoffice has been a little bloaty and a little crashy sometimes, generally at the worst of times. (big report that I'm just about done with)

I'm running OO 2.4 at work, 3.1 at home.. I'm scared to upgrade at work until I've got time to really sit with it.

I don't run OO because its free, I run it because it runs on Linux.
I am willing to pay for software to run on Linux... I am running Cadsoft Eagle for board layout, and Varicad for mechanical. I probably spend more time in front of OpenOffice than both these put together, so getting something that could make me look better and improve efficiency wouldn't be a bad deal.

I'm also nervous about what Oracle is going to do with OpenOffice... I'd like to see them take it on and improve it, maybe fund some good fonts. Maybe do some tearing up and fixing up for stability and speed. But I'm not sure our definitions of "improve" would be the same, and I'm not at all sure I trust Oracle anyways.

I downloaded and installed SoftMaker Office 2010 Beta (rev 580) and ran a comparison to OpenOffice.org version 3.1.1. My system is a stock Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). It has dual-core atom processors with 2gb of ram.

Powerpoint 2007.pptx files (I used some sample shapes and text with some of the new shape effects):
SoftMaker Presentations would not even open at all; OpenOffice.org Presentation opened the file, loaded the text and shapes of my test file, but failed to load some special shape effects like the halo.

Word 2007.docx files (I used some sample text with a funky font, a table with some formatted borders, a graph, a diagram, and a shape):
SoftMaker TextMaker failed to load the font correctly, improperly formatted the table, failed to load the graph, failed to load the diagram, and loaded the shape fine; OpenOffice.org Word Processor failed to load the font correctly, imported the table perfect, failed to load the graph, failed to load the diagram, and loaded the shape fine.

Excel 2007.xlsx files (I created a column with conditional formatting, a column with a colored background, and a column with a border around it):
SoftMaker PlanMaker failed to load the conditional formatting, but showed the column data. Failed to load the column with the colored background entirely, showing none of the data. Failed to load the border around the last column. Open office failed to load the conditional formatting, but showed the column data. Loaded the column with colored background perfectly. Loaded the column border perfectly.

Conclusions:

OpenOffice.org is faster, more compatible with Office 2007, blends in well with my native theme, and is Free. SoftMaker is slow, not as compatible as OO.o, uses it's own theme and widgets, and is 70 Euros.

The only flaw I see it in is fonts. If you don't have the font loaded on the target machine, it doesn't matter what software you use, it will not render/load it, because it doesn't exist. Almost no "office" program embeds fonts. So that cannot be a valid factor when comparing compatibility.

If you have an MS-Windows machine running MS-Office and create a document with a specific font, then try to load that document on an IDENTICAL machine in the IDE

The only flaw I see it in is fonts. If you don't have the font loaded on the target machine, it doesn't matter what software you use, it will not render/load it, because it doesn't exist. Almost no "office" program embeds fonts. So that cannot be a valid factor when comparing compatibility.

If you have an MS-Windows machine running MS-Office and create a document with a specific font, then try to load that document on an IDENTICAL machine in the IDENTICAL software that lacks the font, you won't see that font- it will have to substitute some other font.

I believe that was known, and the primary reason for using such a font in the test. It let us see how the two programs compared when it comes to handling a font that doesn't exist on the machine, and see if it substitutes correctly and keeps any formatting, or does something unexpected and buggy.

If it takes 12 seconds to start a SoftMaker Office app, there is something seriously wrong with your setup. If you care, start it with "textmaker -debug", and it will create a log file (tmlog.txt) that protocols the launch process. Might be interesting to figure where it's idling.

As for the test documents, is it possible to get them? We take pride in our DOCX and XLSX filters (and their quality has been confirmed by several reviews), so I'd like to check them out.

If it takes 12 seconds to start a SoftMaker Office app, there is something seriously wrong with your setup. If you care, start it with "textmaker -debug", and it will create a log file (tmlog.txt) that protocols the launch process. Might be interesting to figure where it's idling.

With all due respect to your product, this is good user feedback, so I wouldn't sound so dismissive. If there's something wrong with his seriously wrong setup, it clearly didn't affect OpenOffice (or anything else) to the same extent. If you meant something wrong with the StarMaker Office installation process that results in a buggy startup on his functional system, then that's different.

As for the test documents, is it possible to get them? We take pride in our DOCX and XLSX filters (and their quality has been confirmed by several reviews), so I'd like to check them out.

It sounded like they were pretty basic documents, and they were described in his post. I'd suggest contacting him directl

Given the existence of OpenOffice.org, I can't imagine how anyone could justify buying this software.

I did. Several years ago already, for Windows at the time.

I hated MS Word, and was longing for the simplicity of old Lotus Ami Pro. OpenOffice felt like just an even more bloated bad clone of MS-Word: the same, but worse.

It is true that TextMaker (2008) doesn't integrate well in my current Ubuntu, and doesn't "look" nice. But I do hope they improve the Linux version and will definitely try the 2010 version. On Windows, it is the best word processor I know (fast, simple, easy to use, with good management of

SoftMaker office isn't really a decent replacement for OO.o on Linux. But there is one place where it's indispensible -- if you have a WinCE or Windows Mobile PDA/smartphone, it's miles better than the Pocket version of Microsoft Office. It actually makes my old HP iPaq 214 useful for writing.